I went down to the farm last weekend for the first full weekend in a month. Sucks to be sick. Thankfully the Winter has not wrought much damage except ripping a sizable limb out of one of my redbud trees. Other than that, the ground is overly saturated from all the rain and snow and all the low lying areas including the river and streams are flooded badly. Looks like another Spring for packing sandbags. I went out with Rob and Toni on Saturday night and tested my limits with alcohol and vertigo. I find I'm now a two beer drunk much to my dismay. Oh well, at least I can walk upright again. The homeopathic cure for the vertigo actually kinda works. Doesn't make you feel normal, just more balanced. It also makes me tired. But then so do most other herbal remedies including pot which makes me go to sleep, much to the dismay of everyone who's ever got me to try smoking it.

We got 2 inches of snow and ice Saturday night which thankfully had melted off by the time I got ready to leave Sunday after watching UNC make it to the Final Four (yeah!)

Saturday morning I got up early and got my haircut. Actually it was like a sheep getting shorn. But for those keeping track, I'm growing my hair out again. I just got the top and sides cut. Now I have a short mullet again. It will look kind of goofy for a week or so. Upon getting back to Rushville town, I paid off a long disputed debt with an auto repair shop, (going back to 2005) so now I don't have to duck the owner every time I see him. Got some donuts and a peach pie at Roger's bakery all for under $10 and went over to Grates Small Engine Repair where they informed me that the Cub Cadet lawn tractor we inherited from my uncle Jake is a dead soldier unless we wanted to invest $2000 which we don't. They are going to buy it for parts so at least I don't have to haul it home with me.

I also told the car repair store to start pulling my S10 Engine apart and find out why I'm getting antifreeze in the cylinders. I'm praying it's a blown head gasket or cracked head. If it's worse than that, I'll be looking for another engine or another truck. I've already replace that engine once. But darn it all, it's a very well built vehicle with a great frame. I'd hate to lose it.

Then I drove to Monmouth, IL (Home of the Earp family) to pick up unsold jewelry from the Buchanan Center for the Arts. Now I get to spend a couple weeks making more for them. I also asked them for clarification on the rules for a juried art show they will be hosting in August. So, I'll be entering 3 of my photos. Figuring out which ones will be the problem. So what I decided to do is narrow it down to about 25 and post all of them as a poll here on my LJ and let my friends list vote on their top 3. I figure you all know as much as anyone about good art. That will happen soon.

Friday night on the trip down, I stopped by August Hill Winery in Uttica to pick up my Quarterly Insiders Wine Club offering. A bottle each of Trapolino and Traminette. While there, the owner discovered I was a photographer and would like to see some of my work to include in their gallery. So now I'm making up a little website to give them a taste.

Work continues to go well. I've been doing a lot of studio shooting lately. Mostly product type shots of tomato paste and Sudoku cubes but also some model shots too. I go to my office in Dubuque about once a month. I was just there 2 weeks ago. I've got an all day shoot at a Chemistry lab in Peoria on the 23rd.

9.5 days until I go to Oregon. We'll be heading to Seattle on April 12 and 13 so if anyone up that way wants to get together for a meal or a visit, let me know and I'll try to accomodate you. We'll then be heading back down to the Eugene area for the rest of the week.

Two weekends ago, I made a speed run to NC and back. My Dad kids me about being too old to make marathon drives anymore. I can still do them but the recovery time is a lot longer than when I was younger. I left Friday afternoon about 4 pm. I got back home about Midnight on Sunday. In the interim I drove 1852 miles, slept at one rest area, one hotel, went to the Spring Council Meeting and attended the naming ceremony for my cousin and had dinner and a long talk with kimboburly on the return trip. Good thing I didn't have to drive any further. Oh and I picked up a couple of early season ticks in KY which gave me tick fever for the first two days of last week. Thanks Kim (kidding). Damn ticks anyway. Of course I found an abandoned house there to shoot. That will be posted to rural_ruin soon. My cousin was there with his son Paul who is about my age despite the grey hair he's getting. Paul was admitted to the Shawnee Nation last Summer. Afterwards, they went on to another son's house in Ohio. Here are pix of my cousin Johnie Blue Fox Vincent and I with Okema (chief) Whitehawk in front of our Council building.

I had a lovely hoecake and flapjack dinner with the intriguing iamcyber last Thursday in Buffalo Grove, IL. If the weather is good, we are supposed to start shooting around the CITY together tomorrow night. But they are calling for rain again...ugh. But we will do it soon if not.